‘The Raging Storm‘ disappointed me. I’d hoped to see a return to the engaging storytelling of the first book in the series, ‘The Long Call‘ but instead I saw the same weaknesses that marred ‘The Heron’s Cry’ amplified until they made ‘The Raging Storm‘ into one of those rare books that I had to force myself to finish.

‘The Raging Storm’ had some good scenes and some interesting characters but the pace was slow and the writing was lazy, the prose often had all the charm of a film script. There was no tension, no passion and no sense of drama. The story meandered rather than moving forward. There seemed to be a lot of repetition of basic information without adding any conclusions. I felt that the book had missed a final read-through and edit to tighten it up.

For example, I think that the first chapter could have been omitted altogether as the information it contained was all repeated later. The first chapter also adopted an odd ‘let me tell you a story’ style. Here’s the first paragraph

This use of the authorial voice kept me at arm’s length from the action, got everything off to a slow start and set the stage for a cosy fable or a mild ghost story rather than immersing me in something real.

The second chapter would have provided the book with a more dramatic and engaging opening that was also more consistent with the rest of the novel. Here’s the first paragraph:

This opening was followed by a vivid description of a lifeboat being launched in a fierce storm and setting out on a shout that would end with the discovery of a dead body in an anchored tender in a remote cove. I relaxed at that point, thinking that the story would live up to the energy and drama of its title, ‘The Raging Storm‘.

It didn’t.

It degenerated into a rambling set of barely connected scenes in which the three detectives painstakingly gathered the details of the victim’s life and of his connection to the people in the village where he was staying on the night that he died. It was tedious, slow and lacking in any sense of either urgency or threat.

By the time I reached the halfway mark, my interest was flagging. By the time I was three-quarters of the way through, I was wondering if I should just cut my losses and read something else. Here’s the note I made at the time:

“Instead of being called ‘The Raging Storm‘ this should be titled ‘Cloudy with Intermittent Showers‘. The pace is slow. Even my curiosity is wilting. I have 147 minutes to go. I hope they’re spent on one hell of a storm or this book will have been a waste of time.”

The storm never came. Instead, I got a lengthy description of a visit to London to interview a headmaster who had some background information on the early life of the dead man. I think that was another chapter that could have been cut without anyone noticing. There was one moment of tension when an attempt was made on the lives of the two detectives. That triggered the big reveal of who was behind the murders but the follow-up, which took place over a cosy chat in a boutique hotel managed to turn what should have been a moment of great drama into something quite anticlimactic.

I was actually relieved to find that the audiobook ended earlier than I’d expected because the final chapter was an interview with the narrator.

If there’s a fourth book in this series, I won’t be reading it.